A mentor from a graduate English program years ago recently asked me why I ride, and his question prompted me not only to give him an answer but also to ask the three motorcyclists I most often ride with (my brother Paul, his friend Ken, and my brother Mark).

I'm curious about why people here ride and look forward to your answers to this question. Meanwhile, here is my mentor's question and our answers.

Why We Ride

Gene's question
I'm not sure I get this motorcycle thing. Wheels like mandalas, Zen, dharma? Not Marlon Brando's movie or Thom Gunn's poem. I know you better than that, terrific poem though.

My answer
I've felt the "motorcycle thing" since I was about six, when my father's friend Al Simon took me for a ride around the block on his first motorcycle, which was probably a tiny 125cc scooter. I can still recall the blur of everything I saw around me and the feeling of fear and excitement, danger and safety.

I was never an athlete , but I've always been attracted to activities that required some physical skill in order to avoid injury or death. When I did construction work, my favorite job was roofing. In my brief period of spelunking, I liked descending into tunnels, where if I slipped and broke a leg it might take a day to get me out of there, but if I was careful with handholds and toeholds I would not slip. Scuba diving had a similar appeal -- follow the rules and you get to see things most people don't see in a way most people don't experience. Shortcut or ignore them and you drown.

With motorcycling, there's a controlled thrill to knowing that if I pay careful and constant attention while skating across the pavement on a machine that, if it malfunctions, could leave me stranded, I'll probably get to where I'm going unscathed, and if I don't -- if I lose concentration on the road, if I ignore a weird noise or vibration, if I fail to check the tire pressure regularly -- things may not go so well.

An important effect of paying all this attention, especially on a long trip on an old, small bike like the ride between Beverly and Hamilton, is that for the eight or so hours I'm in the saddle, I'm in the moment in ways I seldom am in my everyday life. Although I'm riding the same roads I've been on in a car, I'm seeing things and feeling things I don't experience any other way and that anyone who has never ridden a motorcycle has not experienced, either. It's like a mindful, solitary hike in the mountains -- with speed and a whiff of danger added in.

I don't know if that clarifies the "motorcycle thing," but it was fun to reflect on it.

My brother Paul's answer
I have always liked things that are honestly mechanical, not covered over to look non- mechanical. That is one of the reasons I like steam trains, and old factories with line shafts and belt driven machinery, and hand tools and Dads old hardware store - all are tools meant for use and not disguised as anything but what they are. This is what first drew me to motorcycles early on - you can see and touch and hear and smell all the parts that make it go, and nothing is covered over with sheet metal to hide it from view (at least in the 60s and 70s). To this day I would rather have a Sportster than a Goldwing - the Goldwing is a sheet of plastic over the mechanical bits, and says "hands off" to any tampering or investigating. Some Mercedes nowadays come with NO dipstick - there is a computer plug in to tell you what your oil level is and when your oil needs changing. So to me, it was the OBJECT itself not the actual use of the object that attracted me. I can do almost no wrenching myself, although I can do surgery - and I regret that. I never learned when I was young (except on bicycles) and do not have time to learn now, so in reality if I take the bike to a mechanic for almost everything, what practical difference does it make if it has pushrods or OHC valves or a carburetor vs EFI, or if you have to take off 6 body panels to change the sparkplugs - it doesn't make a practical difference because i am paying someone who knows how to do it to do it, but I like the IDEA that if i had to and if Mark was helping me, I COULD change the cams on my Sportster in my garage. I once stopped on the side of the road to see if a guy with an old Harley needed help. It was a shovel head, and he was, on the side of the road, changing a pushrod lifter because he knows that his sometimes seize up, so he carries a spare with him to pull and plug and he is on his way. I admired that immensely. Now, add to that the fact that you can actually GO places and hear the exhaust and feel the vibration and lean into the turns and feel the camaraderie with friends, and to me, who WOULDN'T love a motorcycles???

My brother Mark's answer
It all started for me with Al Simon and some very small childhood memory of his motorcycle parked on our side lot on Kettering. Maybe he let me sit on it perhaps. That grew into a 2 wheeled desire for something with power and our very small dabble into minibikes and motorized machines. I can remember converting our snowplow into a 4 wheeler. Of course, there was that exposure to motocross and Warren racing at Zoar Valley and the powerboat races on the Niagara River. Mechanical power was the driver and 2 wheels was a way to get affordable access to it. Perhaps if we had more dollars to enable access to go carts and muscle cars at an early age rather than mini bikes, Yamaha YG-K, and other bikes beyond that I would be a car guy????

Ken's answer
I think there are three primary reasons that I enjoy motorcycling. The first is that no other activity that I partake in places me in the moment to the extent that motorcycling does. While on the bike the environment is so dynamic it requires complete attention. Changes in road conditions, traffic, the handling of the bike etc. demand complete focus. This crowds out all the extraneous mental noise that picks away at you. I find this controlled stress to be both stimulating and relaxing. A few hours on the bike is like a weeks vacation.

The second reason would be the other motorcycle riders. I can't think of any other riders who I've met who were pricks. I'm sure they exist but I think they are few and far between. From my experience it seems that this pastime attracts mostly good folks.

The third reason would be how riding a bike seems to open up conversations with strangers on the road. I don't know how many times I've stopped along the way only to have strangers approach and strike up a conversation. Usually it begins about the bike and then it goes in any direction. If I was in a car I'm sure none of these interactions would have occurred.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

The summer of ’73 I was 10 years old and my dad did something that would change my life. He took me and my brothers to the local Suzuki dealership to see how we’d fit on a few bikes. He just wanted to get one bike that would fit me and my brothers that were 12, 14 & 15 – not an easy task. Later that day a van dropped off a brand new TS-50 Gaucho. Before the summer was over there were three motorcycles in our family (the oldest didn’t care for them).

That TS-50 gave me something then that I still enjoy about motorcycles over 40 years later – freedom. When I’m riding that’s all I’m doing. I’m in the moment. I’m in touch will all of my senses. I’m calculating. I’m experiencing. I'm challenging myself. I'm learning. I have something tangible that is burned into my memory. I’m still 10, or 18 when I got my first street bike, or 40 when I got my first 4-stoke dirtbike – I’m all of those things at the same time. I’m happy.

While, I quite like motorcycles, I never rode until I was twenty six, mainly because my interest in vintage cars precluded spending money on a bike. I commuted by foot, thumb and bus. I brought a new Jawa 350 and very much enjoyed it, although no long trips were undertaken. I had two significant accidents in 1970-80 and gave up in frustration, but the spark never quite died. In her later years, my mother asked me if I would like another bike, I said maybe. I never brought one, a GN 250 until after she died, then I brought the S40.
I enjoy the sensations that riding gives and that's all I can say.

Because there is no other feeling like it.

not a reason, more a confirmation: read a story once that British actor Sir Ralph Richardson rode his bike almost everyday, even in his later years, thought, so can I!
Also, the smell of the countryside is unmatched on a bike, as is a feeling of being somewhat roguish and unconventional, especially at my advanced age! A middle finger to convention!  

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/actor-sir-ralph-richardson-rid...

verslagen1 wrote on 06/09/17 at 13:28:50:



I'm down with all of that. And I just don't Like sitting in a sterile,isolated from the world, vehicle. My pickup truck is a sixcylinder,four speed, 1987,
I wish I had much more Finger to offer Convention, but a turbo on a Detroit got it..

stewmills wrote on 06/08/17 at 13:47:15:



I am still afraid of women!

I am not sure how to quantify why I like riding - but I started riding in junior high, raced motocross and hare scrambles in high school, gave up motorcycles when I went to college and got into a career - then after 35 years without a motorcycle I bought a trials bike to ride on the farm.....and now I am riding on the street and enjoying the twisties.  I enjoy wrenching and building almost as much as riding.

stewmills wrote on 06/08/17 at 13:47:15:


I hope you're not afraid of dying.